<Begin Segment 83>

AI: There must have been a lot, some mixed feelings for you at the time, because here you were free out of Minidoka, free of camp, and yet some of your sadness of leaving your mother and Joe behind.

MY: Uh-huh, yeah. Right. Right, and, but we were very busy, getting adjusted to the campus and so forth. But -- and I was, started working right away in the cafeteria, and my job was to, was behind the counter. The food counter. Because -- was it air force? One of the, air force was there. And they came back with those army trays to be fed in the cafeteria. And that was sort of like... and I remember those guys were always -- I was behind the counter, and the counter was up to, it was so short. And a couple guys came back and said, "Are you standing in a hole down there?" [Laughs] "Are you on your knees, or what?" But they were army, air force, I think. I think they were having some kind of training. They were in training.

TY: Well, the university, I think, a lot of the university has a lot of -- what did they call them? They're students. They were going to school, but they were in the service.

MY: Yeah, well, universities have students. [Laughs] That's one of the things that they have.

TY: Well, they might have been training. Using the campus as training, training area.

MY: But they were there, I think in some kind of an air force, intelligence training or something.

JY: Yeah, probably. Some kind of academically-oriented training like language or something like that.

MY: Training, yeah. And then the other thing that they were doing, was they were doing war research or something like that, and that's, at least that was the excuse they used when Mike was kicked off, when he was kicked out, when he was suspended. They, that was what they said, that they were doing sensitive --

JY: Defense-related research.

MY: Yeah, exactly. And that was why they wanted him off the campus.

AI: That was early in 1944, was it? That he was forced off of campus?

MY: Yeah, that was before, right before finals. So probably finals were about May, right? So I think it was April, so it was... and so he went through school, almost finished out the year, and I don't know when it was that the transcript -- I think that we had that transcript of questions that --

JY: I have it.

MY: -- he was questioned, yeah. So they must have a date on there.

JY: Probably does.

MY: Maybe around April, or so. But they came on campus and sought out Mike to talk to him. And they asked him the same questions on the so-called "loyalty oath," and he, I guess he -- he didn't, he wasn't aware of what was happening, but he did, apparently responded in a similar fashion. And then from that, from the line of questioning, you could almost tell that this guy was trying to give a -- he kept asking the same question in different ways, and was hoping that Mike would, was trying to give him a --

JY: Tricking him. Tricking him.

MY: No, no, was giving him a chance to, to correct himself. And said, "Would you, are you willing to take up arms?" And he said, "No, because I'm a pacifist. I would never take up arms against anybody," and so forth. And so, and he would ask, "Well, are you sure that," da-da-da. And he kept saying, "No, no, I'm just," and so --

JY: It was actually a pretty amazing transcript, when you look at it.

MY: When you kind of think about it, because just think about it. Mike was, what? Twenty-one years old?

JY: Twenty-one?

MY: He had, it was like he had no support anywhere, he was not, we were not with our parents, there were practically, there was no support system, right, around. He was virtually alone, because guys were expected to volunteer for the army, to get themselves killed to show their loyalty to the country.

JY: It was not a time when you should be saying, "No, I will not bear arms."

MY: But he was, he was very adamant, he said, "No I, this is, this is something that is, it is against my principle, and I just absolutely refuse to do that." And I was just amazed when I read that transcript.

JY: Me too.

MY: And you were trying to get your mind -- it's not amazing now, but at that period --

JY: Knowing what he turned out to be. [Laughs]

MY: Well, no, yeah.

JY: But at the time...

MY: He didn't, he didn't waver from that.

JY: No.

MY: From that, ever, throughout his whole life. He stuck pretty much to that philosophy. I don't know where it came from --

JY: Yeah, right.

MY: -- even within our family. He, it wasn't something that my parents taught him. And see, he said that he recognized the evilness of war and the military when he was in Japan. And while he was in Japan, he heard a lot of propaganda, anti-American propaganda.

AI: In 1939, that he was there.

MY: Yeah, and he said he, he knew that wasn't true. Then he came back in 1940 and then he started hearing all this anti-Japanese propaganda that he knew wasn't true because he was there. And then he, he just put all of this together in his mind. And it was just kind of a remarkable thing, that a young person, you know how they, how they process information in this way. It's very interesting. And really admirable, actually.

<End Segment 83> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.